


Coat of Arms

by manic_intent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, M/M, That HDM AU set during the events of TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22767256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: Poe woke up groggily as he was dragged under a rock overhang. His swimming vision resolved into a dark, anxious face, dusty with sand and scraped across the cheek. “Whew!” said the young man with cadet bars on his sleeves. “If I wasn’t for—I mean, it’s lucky we found you in all that sand.”The small red and yellow finch on the cadet’s shoulder nodded vigorously. Poe relaxed as Atreides smuggled under his arm, the black-bodied, white-bellied shearwater daemon peeking up belligerently. They were in the middle of a sea of sand and heat. “Did we make it to Jakku?” Poe asked, rubbing at his temple. Druk, but his head was sore.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 14
Kudos: 178





	Coat of Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [their_dark_materials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/their_dark_materials/gifts).



> Prompt by @their_dark_materials, who asked for a Finn/Poe His Dark Materials AU. Yass. I love HDM. 
> 
> I was thinking for a while whether to set this in HDM’s universe (aka Finn as ex-Magisterium, Poe as a Lee Scoresby-esque char), but in the end, decided to set it in Star Wars instead—with some changes. For the few people out there who aren’t familiar with HDM, I rec reading at least the first book (Northern Lights by Pullman) and then watching the new TV show with Dafne Keen and Lin Manuel Miranda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuIE1OYnVI Human souls are expressed as animals/daemons, which settle on a specific form once they grow into puberty.

Poe woke up groggily as he was dragged under a rock overhang. His swimming vision resolved into a dark, anxious face, dusty with sand and scraped across the cheek. “Whew!” said the young man with cadet bars on his sleeves. “If I wasn’t for—I mean, it’s lucky we found you in all that sand.” 

The small red and yellow finch on the cadet’s shoulder nodded vigorously. Poe relaxed as Atreides smuggled under his arm, the black-bodied, white-bellied shearwater daemon peeking up belligerently. They were in the middle of a sea of sand and heat. “Did we make it to Jakku?” Poe asked, rubbing at his temple. Druk, but his head was sore. 

“Yeah, we made it. Nearly pasted ourselves across the face of the planet in the process, but we got here. You got thrown pretty far from the ship during the crash. Lucky for you, the new TIES have anti-collision tech in the seats. Took the brunt of it.” The young man gestured at the smoking wreck of the pilot seat sticking out of the burnt sand behind them. 

The finch looked at the smoke, flicking her wings. “We are in _so_ much trouble.” 

Poe struggled to his feet and winced as he sat back down. Finn, that was the name of the young man. Poe had given him the name during their desperate flight off Kylo Ren’s ship when he’d found out that Finn only had a jumble of letters and numbers for a name. Now that Poe could take a breather, that was odd. “Finn. What are you? You’re not a Stormtrooper.” 

“Nope,” Finn said. 

“Judging by the bar on your sleeves, you’re cadet rank?” Atreides asked in his even tone. 

“Yeah.” 

“But not as a pilot or in comms.” On closer inspection, Poe didn’t recognise Finn’s uniform at all. “What did you do for the First Order?”

“Oh, here we go,” said the finch. “Told you this was going to happen.” 

“If I tell you, will you promise not to freak out and take it the wrong way?” Finn asked, looking worried. 

“Now that you’ve said that, I’m probably going to freak out,” Poe said, trying to stagger to his feet. Struck by a bout of dizziness, he winced and sank back down. 

“Uh… firstly… just checking, and you don’t have to answer, but. You’ve got a bird daemon,” Finn said. 

“Yes?” Atreides said testily. 

“Are you…” Finn wiggled his fingers in the air. “Force-sensitive?” 

Poe and Atreides exchanged glances. “Well,” Poe said, even as Atreides growled, “He’s not, though he likes to think he is.”

“Ouch,” Poe said. 

“Okay, haha.” Finn let out a nervous sound. “So you see, although not everybody who's got a bird daemon is force-sensitive, everyone who _is_ force-sensitive does, so. What the First Order does is, they round up everyone whose daemon settles into a bird and shuttle them over to Starkiller Base for testing, and anyone who tests even mildly positive—”

“Becomes one of the Knights of Ren,” Poe said, shifting back a foot in the sand and holding Atreides closer. No wonder the young man was wearing a strange black uniform. “That’s why you had access to every sector of the ship!” 

“Lawd, now they’re freaking out,” said the finch. “Told you they couldn’t handle the truth.” 

Poe took in a deep breath and tried to ignore how Atreides was trembling. “Back from the top. You’re. A Knights of Ren cadet.” 

“Yeah. Sorry?” 

Poe clenched his hands against his thighs. “Did you attack Lor San Tekka’s camp?” 

“They made me go along, but if you’d seen me during the—” Finn swallowed hard, breathing slowly, “—during the massacre, I was throwing up behind a rock. That’s why I was on janitor duty when I found you.” 

“How force-sensitive are you?” Atreides asked. 

“On a scale of one to Luke Skywalker? I’m probably a 5, maybe a 5.5,” Finn said with a casual gesture. 

“More like a 0.5, if we’re on a scale that has Skywalker on one end,” said the finch. “All you can do is sense life signs. And even then, it goes on the fritz all the time. Hell, 0.5 is me being charitable.” 

“Pentecost, we’ve talked about this,” Finn hissed at his daemon. 

Despite the exhaustion, heat, and lingering fear, Poe chuckled. He liked to think that he was a fair judge of character, and Finn _did_ rescue him off the ship. It took guts to defect in such a spectacular manner. Poe could respect that. “Let me catch my breath; then we’re going to have to do something about your clothes. We can’t walk into a settlement with you dressed like that.”

#

They’d crashed about three days out from the nearest settlement on the desert planet. Thankfully, Finn’s ‘on the fritz’ force-sensitivity came in handy for locating water. Jakku was a planet so arid that surface bodies of drinkable water were vanishingly rare. Much of the water was accessed through either drilling down into the groundwater, condensation farms, or the native plant life. The fruits of the Kadik shrub were juicy and hardy.

“Also full of spores,” Poe said as Finn eagerly polished off a slice. He laughed as Finn coughed and sputtered—the handsome young man was way too easy to tease. A travelling caravan of merchants that had been setting off from the shrub hollow had grudgingly traded over some desert gear and rations for Finn’s blaster. It wasn't an ideal trade, but Finn said he didn't use the blaster much anyway. He'd patted a silvery tube-like device that hung at his hip as he'd said it. A First Order lightsaber? Poe didn't know what to think about that.

“Not funny,” Finn said. He hesitated. “You were joking, right?”

“He was totally not joking,” Pentecost said. “You’re gonna be growing thorn mushrooms out of your ass.” 

“Thanks for the mental image,” Atreides said, shuddering. “Don’t mind Poe. The spores are harmless to humans.” She hopped around, inspecting the large thorns that dug into the sand outside the hollowed-out cave. “Should we be stopping here for the night? It’s hardly a secret—it’s part of the main ground-level trade route.” 

“We can handle merchants. It’s the First Order I’m afraid of, and they won’t find us on an overhead sweep if we sleep in there.” Poe gestured at the hollow. “We should take turns keeping watch, though. I can go first.” 

“Okay,” Finn said. They ate from their rations, then Finn changed into the clothes they’d traded for, balled up his old gear, and curled up in the far corner of the hollow with his daemon tucked against his throat. They dropped off quickly—Finn even started snoring gently.

“Cute kid,” Atreides said. 

“Don’t you start,” Poe murmured. 

“How can I not? You spent all day checking out his ass. Yours is nicer, though.” 

“Now that he’s out of that First Order kit, I’m not so sure.” Finn’s new trousers hugged his toned thighs nicely.

“Drool any more, and you’re going to have to eat another spore fruit.” 

“Ha, ha.” Poe shifted against the wall to watch the dark, folding his arms over himself. It was going to be a cold night. 

“You trust him?” Atreides asked quietly. 

“I’d like to.” With a mission this important, trust wasn’t something Poe could afford. 

As the temperature plunged further, Poe tried tucking Atreides against himself, wishing that he’d haggled and traded for more clothes. It didn’t help much. Poe’s teeth were starting to chatter when Finn said, “Hey.” 

“Go back to s-sleep,” Poe said. 

“I can hear you freezing to death over there.” Finn shuffled to his feet. 

Poe blinked as Finn draped his old clothes over Poe’s shoulders. “Don’t you need those?” 

“Nah. I can meditate.”

“Yeah, right,” Pentecost muttered from where she was snug against Finn’s throat. “Like that’s ever worked. You call falling asleep on your butt meditating?”

“Pentecost! Girl, you’re supposed to be on my side.” 

Poe swallowed a laugh. “Come here.” Finn sat down beside him and tensed as Poe tucked an arm around him and leaned in, pulling the spare clothes over both their shoulders. “That’s better.” 

“Yeah,” Finn said softly. His hand stole tentatively over Poe’s back, warm and steady and secure. Beside them, Atreides began to groom Pentecost’s feathers.

#

They fled Jakku aboard the _Millennium Falcon_ , of all things. The _Falcon_. Sure, she was a little banged up, and missing far more parts than safely possible, but. “The _Falcon_ ,” Poe kept saying to himself, running his hands over grimy walls. Behind him, BB-8 beeped in puzzlement.

“The ship mean something to you?” Finn asked. 

“Shouldn’t you be watching our new friends?” 

“Rey and Ulysses are doing fine. It’s not like there’s going to be any more advanced piloting anytime soon. I hope.” Finn walked closer and closer yet, until there was barely a hand’s breadth of distance between them. Atreides hopped off Poe’s shoulder to perch on the engineering station, shifting to give Pentecost space to snuggle up. Finn snuck a glance to the entrance to the cargo hold. “I… um, Poe. Dameron. I was going to say. You’re kind of awesome.”

“Only ‘kind of’?” Poe said with a teasing smile. He recognised the charged air between them for what it was, the easy affection between their daemons.

“I don’t know how to say it,” Finn said, so young and cute and godsdamned earnest. 

“I’ll show you how.” Poe tipped a finger under Finn’s chin, pulling him down for a kiss. Finn kissed him back with endearing eagerness, crowding Poe against the hull. Poe tentatively slid a knee between Finn’s thighs and smiled as Finn gasped and thrust against it. “Am I going too fast?” Poe asked. 

“Go as fast as you like,” Finn whispered, nuzzling Poe’s throat, breathing him in. There wasn’t much privacy available aboard a starship. Poe settled for wedging them behind a stack of dusty old magnetised boxes that looked like they hadn’t stored anything for a long while. Life taught Poe that pleasure was something he had to steal whenever he had the chance. 

Finn blinked as Poe went down on his knees, only to stiffen up in belated disbelief as Poe unzipped him. “Poe!” Finn hissed. 

“What?” Poe looked up with mock innocence. 

“The sonic shower on this ship doesn’t work, and I haven’t had a shower for nearly a week and—”

“Okay, okay,” Poe said, laughing as he let Finn haul him up to his feet. Pinning Finn between himself and the hull, Poe kissed Finn as Finn clutched at his shirt and then at his hips, until they were moving together in a clumsy, desperate grind. Poe worked open pants and underwear, slicking up his palm with spit to grasp both their cocks. 

Finn jerked against him with a whine that he buried against Poe’s shoulder, both of them too keyed up to care that they were probably being too loud. Poe panted against Finn’s bared throat as he jacked them both, thumb slip-sliding against the swollen caps, over the wet slit of Finn’s cock. The girth of the flesh pressed against Poe’s made his mouth water, and he wished that the shower was working, wished that they were alone aboard the ship with not a care in the universe. 

“Hngh… Poe,” Finn whispered, hips snapping into Poe’s grip. His eyes grew dazed with pleasure as a fresh, intense wave of lust swept through them both. Poe glanced to a side—Pentecost and Atreides were rubbing against each other on the workbench, shivering in pleasure. 

“That’s it,” Poe moaned, to Finn, to their daemons. His moans echoed in the cargo hold as a prayer to the universe at large to let this be, to let them have this. For one more hour, for one more day. Finn’s hands clenched tight in Poe’s shirt. Jerking back against the hull, Finn let out a shout that Poe hastily muffled under a palm as he spent himself against Poe’s belly. Drunk on their scent and the heat crackling between them and their daemons both, Poe wasn’t far behind, choking on a sob as he thrust against the mess. 

“Poe,” Finn said, his smile dazed and adoring, “you’re—”

The rest of his words were swallowed in a yelp as the _Millennium Falcon_ shuddered around them. “The hell? Did we hit something?” Finn asked as they tried to set their clothes to rights, cleaning up using rags and spray from the workbench. 

“Tractor beam,” Poe guessed, even as Rey’s voice crackled through the overhead comms with a tense, “Guys? We’ve got company.” 

“Hope it’s not the First Order. We might have to get ready to repel boarders,” Poe said. As Poe headed toward the cockpit for a better look, Finn caught him by the shoulder. Poe glanced over curiously, only to smile as Finn kissed him tentatively on the edge of his mouth. 

“Now I’m ready,” Finn said.

Damn, he was cute. “You got to work on your lines,” Pentecost said. 

“I like his lines.” Poe kissed Finn hard on the mouth. “Talk later. Fight first.” 

“Story of our lives,” Atreides said, and laughed as Poe sighed.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @manic_intent  
> my writing, prompts policy: manic-intent.tumblr.com  
> \--  
> Refs:  
> Finn being force sensitive: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2487322/this-is-what-finn-wanted-to-tell-rey-in-star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-apparently


End file.
